Are you proud of the business owner you’ve become?

When I first started working with coaching clients, I often asked the question:

1. Why did you start your business?

Now, I am asking:

2. What kind of business owner do you want to be?

Owning a business isn’t easy. Each of us starts because we have some burning problem we have to solve, some point we have to prove, or some desire to do work better. After a while, this situation is (mostly) resolved. Then comes the even harder question of figuring out the kind of business owner you want to be.

Who you want to be when inhabiting business and creativity or purpose is a tough thing to lock in on. The two sides can often be at odds. Add in the capitalistic lens of defining success by analytics, publicity, financials, and popularity, and you can easily find yourself pulled off track.

Especially to what seems easy but is so hard to do. Or because you’ve walked into an income bracket, built your life around it, and it’s created that woeful thing, a job, out of what had way more meaning previously. Or because you created a career about doing something you love but don’t always love the reactions to it, losing your creativity or values in the process of people pleasing.

There are so many things worth fighting for that get hijacked.

Redefining how I operate as a business owner means:

• Connecting deeply with creativity.
• Leaving work that I’m proud of.
• Enjoying optimism around new ideas.
• Challenging myself to do better.
• Having an intentional life.
• Reinvention over stagnation.
• Uncovering my version of contentment.
• Being comfortable in my own skin.
• Choosing sustainability of body, mind, and practice.

It also means recognising I’m a business owner, but I’m not interested in getting stuck on the business bit.

I’d rather be praised for challenging myself in some way than than my earning potential. And TBH, I think it is where a lot of business owners also get stuck. It is much easier to sell us the idea that if we make more money, the passion and connection we’ve lost will come back.

It doesn’t. Not when what we really need is change.

We begin our journeys with something to prove and to create the working life we’ve been denied previously. Whether that’s safety, flexibility, opportunity, practicality, access, or the chance to be good at something, if you own your own business, you are asking for more than remuneration from our working life journey.

The issue becomes once we get what we needed, how do we move forward to what we want next?

It is extremely difficult to give ourselves a promotion in a job and workplace we invented. It becomes easy to get caught up in thinking money, popularity, or prestige will solve this. It often leads us away from our original motivations or even the connection with the core part of our work that we love.

Leveling up may take us further and further away from the creative spark we most need.

But how do we recover our connection to work when we’ve mastered a task or our business? And how do we do that while maintaining income?

Here are a few steps to take and questions to ask:

1. Look at what you are doing critically. What is the next natural progression?
2. If that doesn’t interest you, how can you apply the soft and technical skills you’ve acquired to something that does?
3. Look at your current and future plans. Get rid of any leveling up activities that add extra work but don’t bring extra joy or challenge. Can you see any patterns emerging?
4. Think deeply about what you enjoy about your work. How can you extend or stretch that? Can you delegate some of what you do to spend more time stretching yourself?
5. What can you learn now to help you be in a different position by this time next year?
6. Is the financial status and/or reputation you’ve established enough to keep you going if you can’t shake things up?

Need help? Let’s pull apart your business, make a creative change, and help you and your business reconnect.